Rolf Armstrong (1899 – 1960) The father of the American pin-up was born in Seattle and moved to Chicago in 1908, where he later studied at the Art Institute. Armstrong, who studied at the famed Chicago Art Institute, contributed covers to such periodicals as College Humor, Life and Shrine magazine; his advertising accounts included Oneida Silverware. A one-time pro boxer and devoted seaman, ruggedly handsome Armstrong was rarely seen without his yachting cap.
 He then went on to New York, where he studied with Robert Henri. After a trip to Paris in 1919 to study at the Académie Julian, he returned to New York and established a studio. In 1921 he went to Minneapolis to study calendar production at Brown & Bigelow.
Armstrong's work for the Pictorial Review was largely responsible for that magazine achieving a circulation of more than two million by 1926. A year later, he was the best selling calendar artist at Brown and Bigelow. In 1930, RCA hired him to paint pin-ups to advertise their products, and in 1933 the Thomas D. Murphy Company signed him to produce a series of paintings for their line.
He came to fame in the 1920s and 1930s. His use of the pastel medium spawned such famous followers as Billy De Vorss, Earl Moran and Zoe Mozert. Though his work appeared on many pieces of sheet music, as well as on the covers of many magazines, it was Armstrong's dazzlingly smiling, flowingly manned calendar girls for Brown & Bigelow that set the glamour-art standard. Many stars posed for his portraits, including Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, and even Boris Karloff.
With a pastel palette of 3600 colors, Armstrong worked with models in his Manhattan studio, creating enormous originals (typical size 39" by 28"), surviving examples of which are today among the most valuable pin-ups.
Rolf Armstrong died February 22, 1960, on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

Joyce Ballantyne (1918 – 2006) is a noteworthy member of the small "girl's club" among pin-up artists. Like Zoe Mozert, she captured a fresh, real sensuality in her subjects, and a palpable sense of fun. Like Mozert, she was (and probably still is) as attractive as a pin-up herself blonde, green-eyed, and frequently barefoot. She is best known as the designer of the Coppertone girl, whose swimming costume is being pulled down by a dog.
She was born in Norfolk, Nebraska just after World War I, and grew up in Omaha. She attended the University of Nebraska for two years and then transferred to the Art Institute of Chicago to study commercial art.
After two years at the Art Institute, Ballantyne joined King Studios, where she painted Rand McNally maps and illustrated books for Cameo Press. She then moved to the Stevens-Gould Studio, where she remained for more than a decade. While at the studio, she became part of a group of artists that included Gil Elvgren, Al Moore, and Al Buell.
In 1945 Ballantyne began painting pin-ups for Brown & Bigelow, having been recommended by Gil Elvgren. While there, she designed direct mail pin-up brochures for the company, and was eventually given the honor of creating an Artist's Sketch Pad twelve page calendar. She often used herself as a model.
In 1954, Ballantyne painted twelve pin-ups for a calendar published by Shaw-Barton. Upon the calendar's release in 1955, demand was so great that the company reprinted it many times.
Ballantyne then went on to paint one of the most famous advertising images ever, when Coppertone suntan lotion asked her to create a billboard image in 1959. That image, of a pigtailed girl with her bathing suit being tugged down by a small dog, has become an American icon. Her daughter Cheri was used as the model for the girl.
The vivid oils of advertising artist Ballantyne (Coppertone's little girl whose bathing suit is being tugged off by a playful puppy is hers) rival those of her one-time instructor Gil Elvgren. While this example clearly echoes Elvgren (whom she reportedly assisted and even ghosted), Ballantyne's women were often depicted in a looser, more natural fashion than the studiously coy poses of her male counterparts.
Joyce Ballantyne eventually moved into the realm of portraits and fine art, painting the portraits of scores of entertainment and sports personalities as well as luminaries from the business, social, and academic worlds. Subjects included comedian Jonathan Winters, Robert Smalley of Hertz, and Major General John Leonard Hines.
In 1974, Ballantyne moved with her husband to Ocala, Florida where she lived until her death on May 15, 2006.

Ben-Hur Baz (1906 – 2003) Born in Mexico in 1906, Baz was a pin-up and glamour artist who became known in the late 1940s and 1950s for his association with Esquire magazine. He painted pin-ups for their Gallery of Glamour and contributed to their calendars and centerfolds as well.
Baz was extremely prolific. In addition to his work for Esquire, he provided story illustrations for mainstream magazines, worked on a number of national advertising campaigns, and was a successful paperback novel cover artist.

Al Buell - Alfred Leslie Buell (1910 – 1996) was born in Hiawatha, Kansas and grew up in Cushing, Oklahoma. He attended the some classes at the Art Institute of Chicago, which, in concert with a trip to New York City, decided him on a career in art. He was a paperback cover artist, magazine illustrator, and Coca Cola artist worked with Elvgren in the Sundblom shop in Chicago. His oils are among the best pin-ups in that medium, although existing originals (on board, not canvas) are much smaller than those of Elvgren, Ballantyne and Ekman.
In 1935, Buell and his wife moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he joined the Stevens/Hall/Biondi Studio. By 1940, he had opened his own studio. During this period, he did a number of pin-ups for the Gerlach-Barklow calendar company. Buell also did work for several other calendar companies in the early 1940s.
During World War II, Buell was rejected by the draft, so he spent the war painting a variety of popular and patriotic pin-ups for Brown & Bigelow. After the war was over, he began contributing to Esquire's Gallery of Glamour.
Perhaps that explains a certain delicacy in his work; Buell's pretty girls really are "pretty." These girls-next-door are captured in such typically innocent pursuits as sewing, playing tennis, or riding a swing. Unclad as they are, Buell's girls have a wholesomeness, an ingenuousness, rare in the pin-up form.
Often his pin-ups have solid black backgrounds, a la Walt Otto; in other cases, he creates full settings, particularly in the pseudonymous paintings (signed "Al Leslie") he did when moonlighting from Brown & Bigelow at lesser companies. In these paintings Buell strayed into the area of embarrassed coy cutes, often accompanied by cute puppies who inadvertently caused skirts to be raised.
Buell returned to Brown & Bigelow in the late 1950s. He continued to paint glamour and pin-ups until about 1965, when he retired from commercial art. He remained active until he was injured in an accident in 1993, after which he remained in a nursing home until his death in 1996.

Bradshaw Crandell  (1896-1966) was one of the most famous "pretty girl artists" of his day. The astonishingly beautiful blonde is typical of Crandell's ability to merge romance, glamour and sex appeal.
But Crandell rarely contributed a "pure" pin-up. His fame chiefly rests with his twelve years of cover girls (in the 1930s and '40s) for Cosmopolitan, where he succeeded famed cover-girl specialist Harrison Fisher. He provided covers for numerous other prestigious magazines, including Redbook, Judge, Saturday Evening Post and The Ladies' Home Journal. He also produced movie poster art for Twentieth Century Fox.
Occasionally he did a calendar or took an advertising assignment that fell more squarely in the realm of the pin-up, proving that had he wanted to go head to head with Petty, Vargas and the rest, he would have been high on every body's final list.

Edward D'Ancona (???? - ????)
Evidence suggests Edward D'Ancona worked out of Chicago, and is probably yet another graduate of the influential Haddon Sundblom shop; he is rumored to be the son of an artist father.
His painterly style, the lush brush strokes, the warmth of his colors, the girl-next-door beauty of his subjects, suggest a close linkage to both Elvgren and Sundblom. A prolific contributor of calendar-girl art to numerous companies, D'Ancona's earliest works appear to have been for Louis F. Dow; these are stiff, even awkward pin-ups.
Later, an improved D'Ancona landed advertising accounts, including several soft drink firms who capitalized on his Sundblom-like style, so identified with Coca Cola. By the early 1950s, when he joined the ranks of Art Frahm and Jules Erbit in painting glamour girls in gowns, he could hold his own with the best. Like Otto, his girls were less coy than most, brazenly confronting the viewer with a direct gaze

 Olivia de Berardinis (1948 - ) was born in California. She is an American painter of pin-up art and erotic art, professionally known as Olivia. After high school she attended the New York School of Visual Arts and became involved in the minimalist art movement, painting minimalist oils on canvas.
Olivia began to draw and paint pictures of beautiful women in the mid-1970's and, in a short time, was very successful with painting erotic fantasies for popular men's magazines. In 1977 she and her future husband formed the O Card Company, Inc. to publish her work in the form of greeting cards. She signed her first fine art publishing agreement in 1984 and had her first one-woman gallery show in Los Angeles three years later. Olivia has had shows throughout the United States and Japan and her work is collected by fans worldwide.
(more information at.... http://www.rbeditions.com/oli_bio.asp )
She resides with her husband, Joel Beren, in Malibu, California.

Billy DeVorss  (1908 - 1985) William Albartus DeVorss was born in St. Joseph, Missouri was more commonly known as Billy DeVorss. He graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1934 and soon after moved to New York to pursue his career in both pin-up art and advertising.
While his work does not have the almost photographic quality of Vargas, it is his use of colour that make Billy DeVorss's work stand out. He worked almost exclusively in pastels, due to both the speed at which he could work and the effect it produced.
At first glance, Billy De Vorss might be dismissed as a shameless imitator of Rolf Armstrong, whose influence extended even to De Vorss' signature. Working frequently with live models, the self-trained De Vorss painted in pastels, like Armstrong, and his beauties (like Armstrong's) often displayed dazzling smiles and sleek limbs.
But De Vorss had his own special charm his works, while uneven, have a warmth and glow, his girls-next-door radiating a good-natured sexuality. Where Armstrong conveyed glamour, De Vorss conveys romance His idealized women seem to benefit from his lack of formal training. Perhaps it's no coincidence that his favorite model was his wife.
Alone among the pin-up artists in being entirely self-taught, Billy De Vorss sold his first three published pin-ups to the Louis F. Dow Calendar Company in St. Paul about 1933. Until that time, he had been working as a teller in a bank in St. Joseph, Missouri. There he had met the stunning woman, Glenna, who became his wife and first official model. Encouraged to develop his talent by Gene Sayles, the manager of Brown and Bigelow's Kansas City branch office, De Vorss soon received his first commission from the company.
To celebrate, De Vorss and his wife moved to New York and set up a penthouse studio in the Beaux Arts Building, at Eighteen East Tenth Street. Signing up with the, prestigious American Artists group, De Vorss spent the next several years working for calendar-publishing houses such as Brown and Bigelow, Joseph C. Hoover, and Louis F. Dow. Most of his pastel originals were large and bore his highly distinctive Art Deco inspired signature.
Covers for Beauty Parade and the King Features Syndicate as well as calendar commissions from the Osborne and Goes companies followed in the early 1940s. In 1949, the artist illustrated a highly successful campaign for Botany Woollen's robes with depictions of handsome men lounging at home with their own De Vorss pin-ups.
De Vorss used an incredible variety of pastel colours for his work, and he applied them directly onto the board, blending them dry with his fingers. His occasional oil paintings bear the rich, painterly brushstrokes of the Sundblom School. Like Rolf Armstrong, De Vorss always worked from live models for the final painting. He did, however, employ photographs for preliminary stages. His vibrant pin-ups, inspired by New York's theatres and nightclubs, display a fine sense of composition, a flowing, graceful line, and a daring blend of colours.
In 1951, Billy and Glenna De Vorss returned to St. Joseph, their first home. After some time there, they settled in Scottsdale, Arizona, where De Vorss died in 1985.

 Archie Dickens (1907 - 2004) is a British pin-up artist. He attended the Slade School of Art in London. He currently resides and works in West Wickham, Kent and has published two books. In 2001 Tony Blair wore a Paul Smith designer shirt that displayed one of Dicken's paintings on the cuff. Archie died on November 28, 2004 at the age of 98.

Harry Ekman (???? - ????) Chicago artist Harry Ekman worked side by side with fellow Sundblom shop veteran Gil Elvgren, developing a lush style in oils uncannily like that of his mentor. His girls have the same fresh, wholesome glow as Elvgren's, and are seen in such typical Elvgren-ish situations as bicycling, wading, and walking the dog.
Assisting his colleague in the 1960s, Ekman may even have "ghosted" certain Elvgren signed paintings. His own work appeared under both the Brown & Bigelow imprint and Shaw-Barton. Like Elvgren, Ekman specialized in calendars but also worked in advertising.

Gil Elvgren  (1914-1980) Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, Gillette A. Elvgren joined the ranks of Petty and Vargas as one of the premiere American pin-up artists... the Norman Rockwell of cheese-cake. His heroines are often caught in humorous but distressing situations. His exquisite oils of gorgeous girls-next door, their skirts often blowing up to reveal lovely nylon-clad limbs - rival his mentor Haddon Sundblom's "Coca-Cola" Santa's for sheer nostalgic pleasure.

 He attended University High School and after graduation he began studying art at the Minneapolis Art Institute. Some of Gil's fellow students were Coby Whitmore, Al Buell, Andrew Loomis, Ben Stahl and Robert Skemp; many of whom would later work for Coca Cola, as would Elvgren. He graduated from the Academy during the depression at the age of twenty-two. Gil joined the stable of artists at Stevens and Gross, Chicago's most prestigious advertising agency. He became a protege of the monumentally talented Haddon Sundblom, who was most famous for his Coca Cola Santa.

Working in Sundblom's shop (Stevens-Gross) with Al Buell and Andrew Loomis (among other noted illustrators), Elvgren contributed to various Coca-Cola ads himself. Sundblom who had studied at the American Academy of Fine Art taught his star pupil the lush brush stroke technique that makes Elvgren's girls such glowing wonders.

 In 1937, Gil began painting calendar pin-ups for Louis F. Dow, one of America's leading publishing companies. These pin ups are easily recognizable because they are signed with a printed version of Elvgren's name, as opposed to his later cursive signature. Dow paintings were often published first in one format, then painted over with different clothes and situations. These 'new' paintings were then republished and distributed to an unsuspecting public.

 Around 1944, Gil was approached by Brown and Bigelow, a firm that still dominates the field in producing calendars and advertising specialties. They offered him $1000 per pin-up, which was substantially more than Dow was paying him. Elvgren signed on with B&B. Gil's Brown and Bigelow images all contain his cursive signature.

 By the terms of Elvgren's contract with B&B, he would turn out twenty calendar girls each year, ranging from cowgirls of the golden west to sultry sirens of the Riviera. Elvgren looked for models with vitality and personality, and chose young girls who were new to the modeling business. He felt the ideal pin-up was a fifteen-year-old face on a twenty-year-old body, so he combined the two.

An Elvgren model was never portrayed as a femme fatale. She is, rather, the girl next door whose charms are revealed in that fleeting instant when she's been caught unaware in what might be an embarrassing situation. Gusting winds and playful plants grab at her lovely, long legs. She is intruded upon as she takes a bath. Her skirts get caught in elevator doors, hung up on faucets, and entangled with dog leashes. The elements conspire in divesting her of her clothing.

 Today he is best known for his pin-up paintings for Brown & Bigelow. Elvgren was one of the most important pin-up and glamour artists of the twentieth century. In addition, he was a classical American illustrator. He was a master of portraying the feminine, but he wasn't limited to the calendar pin-up industry. He was strongly influenced by the early "pretty girl" illustrators, such as Charles Dana Gibson, Andrew Loomis, and Howard Chandler Christy. Other influences included the Brandywine School founded by Howard Pyle.

Elvgren was a commercial success. His clients ranged from Brown and Bigelow and Coca-Cola to General Electric and Sealy Mattress. In addition, during the 1940s and 1950s he illustrated stories for a host of magazines, such as The Saturday Evening Post and Good Housekeeping. Although best known for his pin-ups, his work for Coca-Cola and others depicted typical Americans — ordinary people doing everyday things. He died on February 29, 1980.

 Jules Erbit (???? - ????) Little is known about Jules Erbit, but this master of pastels was one of the most prolific pin- up artists from the 1930s into the 1950s. His lovely women grace calendars, posters and prints, published by C. Moss, Brown & Bigelow, and others. Bathing-suit beauties are rare among the works of Erbit, who specialized in more sedate, but nonetheless sensual images. Erbit typifies the glamour approach a characteristic Erbit pin-up features a lovely woman in a gown leaning against the rail of a ship, or lounging in a garden. It's a soft-focus, flowers-in-the-hair world.
The artist's Masterful use of pastels for his radiant beauties puts him securely in the camp Rolf Armstrong followers; but, unlike Billy De Vorss, Erbit has his own immediately distinctive style. Where Erbit most resembles Armstrong is in the size of the (few known surviving) originals massive works, they typically measure 14" by 31".

Art Frahm (1907-1981) was an American painter of campy pin-up girls and advertising. Frahm lived in Chicago, Illinois, and was active from the 1940s to 1960s. Today he is best known for his "ladies in distress" pictures involving beautiful young women whose panties mysteriously flutter to the ground in public situations, usually causing them to drop their bag of groceries. In one of Frahm's noted idiosyncratic touches, celery is often depicted.
Frahm had adequate technical competence for his medium, with a style somewhat reminiscent of Norman Rockwell's although more cartooned. He was mostly influenced by commercial artist Haddon Sundblom, with whom Frahm may have worked as an assistant early in his career. Frahm's forte was depicting beautiful young White women, with great care taken in rendering their legs and figures. Frahm's depictions of the women's faces are less successful, often tending towards plastic doll-like expressions. Minor problems with perspective and unrealistic depiction of subsidiary figures and objects are common in Frahm's work.
Frahm was commercially successful. His falling-panties paintings are still considered too camp to be art, and too juvenile to be erotica. However this genre (which Frahm seems to have created) was in demand in the 1950s, and was later imitated by some other pin-up artists. The falling-panties art has a small cult following as mid-20th century kitsch, or even as fetish art. The works are best described with plenty of irony; James Lileks' clever analysis of Frahm's work has brought it to the attention of many on the Internet.
In addition to pin-ups, Frahm created a series of humorous hobo-theme calendar illustrations. His advertising art included works for Coca-Cola and Coppertone.

Pearl Frush (???? - ????) Frush was born in Iowa and moved to the Gulf Coast of Mississippi as a child. She began drawing as soon as she could hold a crayon in her hand; when she was ready for formal studies, she enrolled in art instruction courses in New Orleans. After additional training in Philadelphia and New York, Frush joined her family in Chicago, where she studied at the Chicago Art Institute under Charles Schroeder.
Frush opened her first studio in Chicago in the early 1940s. While she accepted freelance jobs, she also worked at the studio of Sundblom, Johnston, and White. By 1943, she had become one of the Gerlach-Barklow Calendar Company's most important artists, creating a string of popular series: Liberty Belles, Sweethearts of Sports, Girls of Glamour and Glamour Round the Clock. In 1947, her Aquatour series, a dozen pin-ups all located in aquatic settings, broke all sales records. By 1955, Frush had become a "hot property" in the calendar-publishing business, so it was only natural that Brown and Bigelow should seek her out. A year later, the firm published its first Frush pin-up, a horizontal picture especially done for "hangers" (large wall calendars with one print attached).
A vigorous and attractive woman, Frush enjoyed sailing, canoeing, swimming, and playing tennis, and she would often incorporate sport themes into her work portrayed in a crisp, straightforward style, her pin-ups and glamour paintings effectively captured the spirit of young womanhood. Her girls were wholesome and fresh, shapely but never overtly sexual. Somehow they were able to look both like movie stars and like the girls-next-door.

 As one of the top three women pin-up and glamour artists in the calendar art market at mid-century, Pearl Frush readily commanded the respect of the art directors, publishers, sales managers, and printers with whom she worked. Yet because she worked primarily in watercolour and gouache, her originals could rarely be reproduced in large enough quantities for her to achieve widespread popular acclaim.

Fairly prolific in the 1940s and '50s, Chicago artist Frush produced fresh, beautiful, shapely pin-up girls who share with the women of Mozert and Ballantyne an individuality and reality the men in the field seldom achieved. Her originals are comparatively tiny (typically 19" by 14"), and reveal a delicate, flawless technique as beautiful as her subjects. She may be Vargas' only true rival in watercolor, and Petty's in airbrush.

She was not averse to Elvgren-style tease a Frush girl could purse her lips and look coyly at the viewer with the best of them but Frush more often presented her young women in a straightforward manner. By the mid-1950s she was capable of near photographic perfection. A close examination of her work, however, reveals a talent for meticulously realistic images comparable to those of the far better known Alberto Vargas.

Frush's original paintings were executed on illustration board that usually measured about 20 x 15 inches (50.8 x 38.1 cm).  She sometimes signed her paintings with her married name "Mann". Her renderings were always done with great precision, capturing every nuance of a subject in an almost photo-realist technique.

Earl Mac Pherson (1910 - 1993) Edgar Earl MacPherson was born on August 3, 1910, in Oklahoma. He moved to Los Angeles after high school, got a job painting movie posters for a downtown theatre, and took evening art classes at the Chouinard School of Art. In 1929, he set up shop at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu, painting portraits of wealthy guests.

In 1939, MacPherson was an aspiring glamour artist with a studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. MacPherson married his first model at Brown and Bigelow, then went on to create a unique pin-up calendar that would become a standard in the industry. First published in 1943, his Artist's Sketch Pad became a million-dollar seller. Each page of the twelve-page calendar bound at the top with a spiral binder, featured a primary pin-up figure surrounded by pencil sketches showing the same model in various poses relating to the central image. This was followed by another triumph: his two deck set of playing cards for Brown and Bigelow, called Win, Lose, or Draw, received a total of 168,000 orders in four months. His diary-style calendar, Something to Remember, was his last success before he went off to war in 1944.

Before going to Brown and Bigelow, MacPherson had painted a very famous pin-up image for the Shaw-Barton Calendar Company. The best-selling image in the company's 1941 line, Going Places was so popular that Lucky Strike cigarettes asked to reproduce it on their 1942 calendar with the caption "Lucky Strike Green Goes to War".

Discharged in 1946, after teaching plane decoy recognition to Navy pilots, he settled on a four-acre ranch in Del Mar, California. He also hooked up once again with Shaw-Barton and began the first of nine consecutive years of MacPherson Sketch Book calendars for them. In 1954, Shaw-Barton published a book called Hunting With MacPherson, a parody with pin-up girls dressed as various hunting birds; the same year, the artist. wrote and designed a best-selling how-to book entitled Pin-Up Art for the Waiter Faster Company.

"Winter Scene," circa 1950, is, typically, a pastel, and the cartoon snowman pencil sketch. Mac worked with live models, and men's magazine spreads of him painting lovely nudes, scattered about his modernistic Southern California studio, added to his legend. The versatile Mac Pherson also has a considerable reputation as a Western artist. In addition, he has begun a new series of signed limited edition pin-up prints for Stabur Graphics.

In 1951, MacPherson was stricken with polio, and his assistant, Jerry Thompson, took over the Sketch Book calendar series under the name T. N. Thompson. In the early 1950s, MacPherson had his own television show in Arizona; about 1960, he moved to Tahiti and then traveled widely in the South Pacific. He died in December 1993.

Bill Medcalf (???? - ????) Though research hasn't yet confirmed it, Bill Medcalf is apparently another Sundblom shop graduate. Though not as prolific (or nearly as well-known) as Gil Elvgren, Medcalf is of all the would-be Elvgrens, including both Ekman and Ballantyne the master's nearest equal, turning out lushly rendered oil paintings of gorgeous All American girls. Medcalf's work turns up on calendars, both in girl-next door tease situations and in the glamorous ball-gown genre. A St. Paul artist who worked for Brown & Bigelow, he seems to have primarily devoted himself to providing pin-up girls to top advertising accounts, including Sylvania ("Miss Sylvania") and Kelly Springfield Tires.

Al Moore (19?? - 1991) Moore was a busy illustrator from the 1940s to the late 50s, generating advertising, fashion, story art, and pin-ups. Covers for Saturday Evening Post and Collier's and interior work for these and Woman's Home Companion, American Magazine, Woman's Day, McCall's, Cosmopolitan. Ads for Hertz, Whitman's Chocolates, Ford, Camay, Nash, US Rubber, Coke, Old Gold, Botany.
 Replaced Vargas and Petty as Esquire's main pin-up man. Moore's girls are less glossy and impossible than those of his talented predecessors, being more girl-next door realistic and natural. Heir apparent to Varga at Esquire was Al Moore, who shared the magazine's 1948 calendar with Ben-Hur Baz and other major commercial artists contending for the role. In 1949, 1950 and 1951, Moore was solo artist on the best selling, most prestigious pin-up calendar around. Why he was replaced is unknown another money dispute, possibly?

 Petty or Varga-level fame eluded Moore, but his pin-ups are among the best of the late 1940s early '50s, bridging the glamour girls-next-door of Elvgren and the post-war, modern look of Chiriaka and others. Like Elvgren, Moore created voluptuous dream women; but his strong design sense linked him to Chiriaka, as did his use of gouache to give his girls graduated skin tones and a sensual, earthy quality. Moore's women were wide-eyed wonders, usually blonde, curves spilling out of bikini tops, full bruised lips promising passion. These provocative yet All American temptresses preened for the viewer, very direct, seldom coy, promising the sexual revolution that was to come. He provided calendars for Esquire, Brown and Bigelow. Last illustrations for Pan Am and US Olympics.

Earl Moran (1893 - 1984) Earl Steffa Moran was born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, in December 1893. Like many of his contemporaries Moran studied at the Chicago Art Institute, while at the same time working for a large engraving house which specialised in men's fashion illustrations. Moran studied in Chicago for two years before moving on to Manhattan where he enrolled at the Art Students League.

He was a master of pastels, though he showed little if any influence of reigning Brown & Bigelow star Rolf Armstrong, whose domain he encroached upon in the '30s. Prolific Moran, a Chicago Art Institute attendee, was soon a superstar himself, creating lively, sexy girls whose relationship with the viewer was seldom a teasing one. Unlike Elvgren and others, Moran did not continually re-work one type of situation, and his pin-ups have more variety than any other major contributor to the field.

In 1931 he moved back to Chicago and opened a small studio, specialising in photography and illustration. In 1932 he signed an exclusive contract with Brown and Bigelow and produced his first, and perhaps best known, pin-up for the company: "Golden Hours" in 1933. This pin-up proved so popular that it was used to market a variety of products, including a huge 5 pound box of chocolates.

Earl Moran became one of America's best known pin-up artists after Life magazine ran an article on him in 1940. Breaking in via advertising work for Sears-Roebuck, Moran went on to magazine illustration, for example Life, movie posters (Something for the Boys 1944) and even co-published an early "girlie" magazine, Beauty Parade, contributing covers, sometimes under his middle name non de plume, "Steffa".

The early forties where also a time of some hardship for Moran following his bitter divorce from his wife Mura. After the divorce had been settled he moved to Hollywood and commenced painting film stars along with his calendar work for Brown and Bigelow. One of his most famous models whilst in Hollywood was the young Marilyn Monroe, who modeled for Moran between 1946 and 1950. Earl Moran continued to paint for Brown and Bigelow well into the late fifties before deciding to retire to paint fine art subjects.

Although Earl Moran utilised a variety of mediums, e.g. oil on canvas in the 40's and oil on canvasboard in the 50's, he most commonly worked in pastels. His work can often be recognised by his heavy use of light and shadow. His most enduring pin-ups feature his famous late '40s model, Marilyn Monroe. He signed with Aaron Brothers Galleries and continued to paint for collectors until 1982 when his eyesight started to fail. Earl Moran died on the 17th January 1984, in Santa Monica.

Zoë Mozert (1907 - 1993) The most famous female pin-up artist, Mozert is an exemplary disciple of the Rolf Armstrong pastel style. Often her own model, Mozert is noted for rejecting sexy-girl clichés in favour of depicting more real-seeming young women, with recognizably individual features and personalities.

Her cover portraits of Hollywood starlets for such publications as Romantic Movie Stories and Screen Book were particularly popular, but she also contributed covers to such periodicals as American Weekly and True Confessions.

While the bulk of her work including such deliriously romantic nudes as "Moonglow" and "Sweet Dreams" was calendar-oriented (primarily for Brown & Bigelow), Mozert also made a mark as a movie poster artist, notably for Carole Lombard's True Confession, and the notorious Jane Russell/Howard Hughes sex and sagebrush saga, The Outlaw. Even her less sultry sirens exude both charm and sex appeal.

K.O. Munson (1900 - 1967)  Knute (K. O.) Munson was born in Oslo, Norway, and grew up in Sweden. His family moved to the United States when he was a teenager and settled in Michigan. Munson received his first commission before he ever studied art, when a local doctor hired him to draw medical illustrations for his lectures on surgery. Munson went to Chicago when he Was twenty-three to study at the Academy of Fine Art and the American Academy of Art, where his teachers included Andrew Loomis, He later studied with Harvey Dunn at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City.

Returning to Chicago, Munson got a job illustrating catalogues for men's clothing and accessories and became on the job friends with Earl Moran. Loomis later advised Munson to consider advertising art as a career and referred him to Outdoor Advertising Incorporated, where he painted advertisements for Milky Way candy bars. In 1936, Munson received a call from Moran, who was then a staff artist at Brown and Bigelow. Moran told him the firm had liked the samples he sent and that he should "grab paint brushes and get here right away".

Seven years later, Munson inherited the firm's popular Artist's Sketch Pad calendar when Earl Mac Pherson entered the service. Sticking to the pastel medium, Munson replaced Mac Pherson's Petty smooth pin-ups with sharper, crisper lines, though the soft curves of his bright-eyed beauties were definitely appealing. He revised the calendar, applying a vignette technique inspired by Dean Cornwell's work that produced the overall effect of an intimate studio work. Munson's pastels for the calendar featured healthy, vital women, full of warmth and softness.

 In 1945, Brown and Bigelow used Munson's pin-ups for their Direct Mail Calendar line. He continued to produce dozens of pin-up paintings and drawings for the firm until 1949, when he decided to return to Chicago. There he kept busy as a freelancer. Earl Carroll's Theatre Restaurant in Los Angeles, billed as "The Glamour Spot of Hollywood", commissioned him to do a painting for an over-size souvenir postcard. Soft-spoken sportsman Munson had been (and continued to be) a successful commercial artist; over the years his clients included Lucky Strike cigarettes, Kelly-Springfield Tires, U.S. Rubber Corporation, and Goodrich Tires., Motorola, Mars Candy and Sealy Mattress (an ad for the latter featured a fetching Munson beauty lounging on a cloud).

During his years at Brown and Bigelow, Munson had become an accomplished colour photographer, and in his new studio on Chicago's North Side, he added photographic work to his commercial art jobs, continuing to create pretty girl art for various companies. As painted pin-ups went out of vogue, he had the foresight to shift into shooting cheesecake photo layouts for such men's magazines as Modern Man and Figure.

In 1958, Artist and Photographer magazine ran a cover story entitled "K. 0. Munson and His Glamour Queens". Munson, described as "unpretentious, congenial, frank", reflected as follows on the interplay between painting and photography: "The camera becomes one of the painters most useful and important tools. Painting, on the other hand, with its centuries of tradition and its massive accumulation of knowledge has been invaluable to the photographer.. Each has much to offer the other".

Not much is known about the "when" of many Munson projects, including Munson himself. His teachers included Andrew Loomis, who pointed Munson toward advertising (Goodrich, Lucky Strike, Ice Follies, Milky Way) and Harvey Dunn. But it was friend Earl Moran who gave him the most successful suggestion: glamour pin-ups. Munson's pretty pastel girls graced calendars, blotters, postcards, matchbooks, and promotions. He took over Brown and Bigelow's Artist Sketchbooks while Earl MacPherson was in WW2 service. Adding color photography later in his career, his works was published in slicks like Modern Man.

Walt Otto (???? - ????) was another of the Elvgren-style pin-up artists, creating beaming American beauties in lushly painted oils on canvas (for Gerlich-Barclaw, among others). Research has neither confirmed nor denied Otto as part of the Sundblom shop. Despite hyper-realism typical of the Elvgren school, Otto varies considerably from the Elvgren pattern in several key ways. His paintings contain cartoonist elements, particularly in the expressions of his winsome girls (as well as his cartoonist-style signature). Additionally, his women are less coy than Elvgren's an Otto girl typically attired in short shorts or bathing suit, occasionally tugged along by a cute mutt or two stares unabashedly at the viewer. Also, Otto eschews any suggestion of setting for a solid black background, and frequently uses Petty-style cartoon outline shorthand for a phone cord or dog leash or whatever to better focus the attention on the pretty subject at hand.

Irene Patten (???? - ????) Please submit any biography information to us so it can be added here.

George Petty (1894 - 1975) George Brown Petty IV was born in Abbeville, Louisiana on April 27, 1894 to George Brown Petty III and his wife, Sarah. The Petty family moved to Chicago, Illinois just before the turn of the century, where George III, a photographer of some note, enjoyed considerable success. George worked in his father's photo shop, where he learned how to use an airbrush. George enrolled in evening classes at Chicago's Art Institute. After his graduation from high school, George traveled to Paris to study art at the Académie Julian. He stayed there, studying with Jean-Paul Lauren's and others, until 1916, when World War I caused Joseph P. Herrick, ambassador at that time, to order all Americans to return home. Petty then returned to Chicago, working as a photo retoucher for a local printing company. By the early 20's Petty was working as a freelance artist, painting calendar girls and covers for The Household magazine. It wasn't until 1926 that Petty opened his first studio in Chicago, by which time his client list had grown enormously.

George Petty never discussed in detail those artists that influenced him, other than J. C. Leyendecker (an artist for The Saturday Evening Post during George's high school days) for his interpretation of men, Coles Phillips for his technique, and Maxfield Parrish for his use of light. However, it can be inferred from his later work that other influences included those artists who were extremely popular in Paris at the time, such as Alfons Mucha, George Barbier, and in particular the watercolor technique of England's Russell Flint.

His pin-up art appeared primarily in Esquire and Fawcett Publications's True and was also seen widely in calendars marketed by Esquire, True and Ridge Tool Company. Petty's Esquire gatefolds originated and popularized the magazine device of fold-out centerfolds. Reproductions of his work were widely rendered by military artists as nose art decorating warplanes during the Second World War, including the Memphis Belle, known as "Petty Girls."

George Petty is best remembered for his pin-up creation ‘The Petty Girl’, an American icon that lasted from 1933 to 1956. The Petty Girl was originally based on Petty's wife, although like Vargas and many artist's after him, Petty usually combined the best features from a variety of models. He also often shrunk the head and elongated the torso and legs to heighten the effect. The Petty Girl started life in Esquire magazine in the Autumn of 1933, however she soon spread to advertisements, calendars and film posters. Petty left Esquire in 1940, soon after they had hired Vargas, however he continued to work well into the 70's for companies like ‘True’ Calendars and the ‘Ridgid Tool Company’. George Petty died on July 21st, 1975, in San Pedro, California. More information at .... http://www.thepinupfiles.com/petty.html

Gene Pressler (???? - ????) Please submit any biography information to us so it can be added here.

Luis Royo (1954 - ) is a Spanish artist, known for his darkly sensual paintings of women and mechanical life forms. He has also recently started doing sculptures of some of his earlier art. He was born in Olalla, a small town near Teruel, Spain. He has produced many paintings for his own books/exhibitions, but he has also produced art for various other media: videogames, CD album covers, comic book covers, and Tarot cards.
He is most famous for his work doing illustrations of Julie Strain for the animated movie Heavy Metal.

Biography Education & early years
Luis Royo born in Olalla, a small town in Teruel. Soon afterwards he moved with his family to Zaragoza, where he went to his first school, and where his first memories come from, with drawing already playing a major part. In his first memory, he is sitting in front of the large school windows, and tracing the drawings that his teacher gave him.

His practical side, which he acquired from his family, led him to study Technical Drawing for Construction. He soon discovered that geometric forms did not completely satisfy him. He began to study painting, decoration and interior design in the Industrial School and the School of Applied Arts, and he combined this with different jobs in interior design and decoration studios in 1970 and 1971.

During this time he also combined his employment activity with painting. Influenced by May ´68 he made large format paintings with social themes, which he exhibited in group shows between 1972 and 1976, followed by a series of individual exhibitions in 1977. On discovering adult comics with the work of artists such as Enki Bilal and Moebius, in 1978 he began to draw comic strips for different fantasies and he exhibited in the Angoulême Comic Fair in 1980.

In 1979 he left his jobs in the decoration studios, despite being father to a son, to dedicate himself entirely to comics. In 1981 and 1982 his work was published in magazines such as 1984, Comix international, Rambla and, occasionally, in El Víbora and Heavy Metal.

1980s A meeting in 1983 with 1983 con Rafael Martínez, in the Zaragoza Comic Fair would establish his professional future. He was commissioned by Martinez to produce five illustrations for Norma Editorial marking the start of a professional relationship which still thrives today.

The first commissions came straight away. His work was no longer restricted to national territory and was frequently published in the foreign media. Among other countries he has published work in the USA, Great Britain and Sweden, as well as producing cover illustrations for prestigious publishing houses such as Tor Books, Berkley Books, Avon, Warner Books, Batman Books and others.

American magazines such as Heavy Metal and National Lampoon often turned to Luis Royo for their cover illustrations, as well European magazines like Cimoc, Comic Art, Ere Comprime, Total Metal and others. However, his work was not just restricted to magazine covers as he was also asked to make covers for videos and computer games.

In 1985, parallel to his work as an illustrator, he published a comic album in the Rambla series and a year later Ikusager Ediciones S.A. published an experimental comic by him entitled DESFASE.

1990s Once established in a privileged position in the international illustration market, he expanded the production of his own work, as opposed to commissioned works. Most of his own work was bought by different media or included in compilation works. In 1992, following a proposal a few years earlier by the man who, nine years ago, had discovered him as an illustrator, he published his first compilation work: WOMEN - an album which brought together his best illustrations to date. With this book he was already recognised as a great illustrator and his preference for drawing the female figure began to emerge clearly. It was a surprising book for comic lovers, covering a series of different genres, which led to its publication by Editorial Soleil in France and Ediciones Comic Forum in Germany. On the basis of this compilation he undertook his first exhibition of original illustrations.

A year later, Comic Images brought out a collection of Trading Cards using his illustrations, under the title FROM FANTASY TO REALITY. Following the success of the first compilation, in 1994 MALEFIC was published in with most of the illustrations by Luis Royo, establishing a different world and range of colours. In MALEFIC the whole illustrator was revealed - an illustrator capable not only of portraying fantasy worlds, but also of creating a story and a sculpture around the character who gives the book its title. In the same year, WOMEN was republished, and in the USA Penthouse ran an article on his illustrations.

In 1995, new publishers began to take an interest in the work of Luis Royo: Ballantine, Nal, Daw, Doubleday, Harper Paperbacks, Zebra, Fasa Corporation, Pocket Books for the Star Trek series, Penthouse Comix and Fller Ultra X-Men by Marvel. From that year on, the work of Luis Royo appears in many different formats, in different countries (including Eastern European countries): calendars, posters, T-shirts, CD covers, mouse mats, Trading Card collections in collaboration with other artists, such as THE ART OF HEAVY METAL or individually, in the case of his third collecting of trading cards, THE BEST OF ROYO.

The fantasy and quality of Luis Royo's work began to find its place in all kinds of media, and his name became increasingly well known. In 1996 he had a Penthouse cover in USA and Germany, along with an article in the magazine. The same year many reports about his work appeared in prestigious publications including La Stampa in Italy, Airbrush Action in USA and Germany, and in Penthouse Comix. He also received the Silver Award SPECTRUM III the best in contemporary Fantastic Art in the USA.

Following on from MALEFIC, his third album, SECRETS, appeared in 1996 with magic and the female figure occupying the central roles, with the underlying presence of the fairytale Beauty and the Beast. This work was published by NBM for English-speaking countries. But there were yet more surprises to come that year for his fans with the WARM WINDS portfolio, published by Norma Editorial in cooperation with Heavy Metal.

Edward Runci (1921 - 1986) was born on July 4, 1921 in Genoa, Italy. Edward Runci is an outstanding but unfortunately little-known or talked-about master of pin-ups in oil. His luxuriant brush strokes reveal a talent and skill comparable to Elvgren, though Runci apparently is not a graduate of the Sundblom shop. According to noted pin-up authority Charles Martignette, Runci was a portrait artist in Hollywood when he was approached by a calendar company for pin-ups. Martignette notes that Runci girls frequently get caught in compromising situations climbing a fence to flee a bull, dress blowing up on a Ferris Wheel ride. Runci's early 1950s girls are rosy-checked, voluptuous, often blonde Marilyn Monroe-types whose wholesome sensuality radiates off the canvas. He also dabbled in the glamour-gown sub-genre, creating startlingly life-like effects in the silky folds of garments. Martignette speculates that Runci's artist wife may have likewise done similar, but slightly looser pin-ups also under the singular "Runci" byline. Maxine his wife, also an accomplished artist and sculptor, did some pinups under the name of M. Stevens which were often to be confused with those of her husband Ed's. Later works of Maxine's were signed M. Runci. She also flourished in her career. Both Edward and Maxine died early in life. He died on July 12, 1986. A great loss to the art world.

Donald L. "Rusty" Rust (1932 - ) was born in Erie, Pennsylvania. He began drawing and painting at a very early age and has never had the desire to be anything but a serious artist. His early work was directly influenced by his grandfather, Emil Rust, Gil Elvgren, Bob Toombs, and Norman Rockwell. However, he feels there has been no one single influence in his wildlife art and insists that all wildlife artists have affected his style.

For many years, Rusty's paintings concentrated on circus and portrait subjects; but recently, wildlife subjects have intrigued him more and more. His portraits include such prominent individuals as: Emmett Kelly Sr., Emmett Kelly Jr., Merle Evans (Ringling band leader), Norman Rockwell, and Molly Rockwell. In fact, D.L. Rust and Norman Rockwell used to correspond regularly and in one letter Rockwell emphasized that Rusty's artwork "is very good indeed."

Rust's paintings hang in the Ringling Museum of the Circus, Sarasota, Florida; the Norman Rockwell Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. He has illustrated books for Valkyrie Press, A.S. Barnes & Co., and World of Yesterday Publications; and has provided illustrations for Reader's Digest and other magazines. His artwork has also appeared on collector's plates, appointment books, wall calendars, porcelain mugs, playing cards and jigsaw puzzles.

Rusty's ability to capture nature lies between fantasy and reality. Realism is his style, but he wants to take the collector's imagination one step further. He is an artist sensitive to nature and its surroundings. The beauty of his artistic documentation is distinctly his own. Rusty takes us not just to a creative visual, but to a place and a story. Rust has produced more than 15,000 paintings and has 2,000 originals registered by owners with the National Museum and Gallery Registration Association (an NMGRA record!). Mr. Rust is also a prolific and talented pin-up and glamour artist. He has painted over 850 pin-up and nude oil paintings preferring large 30" x 24" sized paintings. He was a friend and neighbor to Gil Elvgren in Sarasota, FL and apprenticed with him.

Mr. Rust's preferred medium is oil on canvas and his subjects range from wildlife, scenic's, seascapes, still-life, portraits, glamour, illustrations, pin-ups, camouflage-type, and fantasy to nudes. He has painted many portraits of prominent persons including Emmett Kelly, Sr., Emmett Kelly, Jr., Merle Evans, Lou Jacobs, Charly Baumann, Norman Rockwell, Molly Rockwell, Irish McCalla, and Mamie Van Doren. His work is in Museums such as the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Ringling Museum of the Circus, and the Norman Rockwell Museum. Mr. Rust has done many Limited-edition prints & posters published by such companies as Contemplative Investments, Galaxy Art, Fireside Classics, Voyageur Art, Black Wolf Press, Inc., Canyon Publishing, and Applejack Limited Editions.

Calendars with his work have been published by Shaw-Barton, Daydream Publishing, Brown & Bigelow, Avalanche, and the Golden Turtle Press. He has done many plates for the Bradford Exchange Collector's plates series. He was the first to do limited-edition original paintings (clowns, wildlife, Norman Rockwell portrait).

T. N. Thompson (???? - ????) In the early 1950s, Earl Mac Pherson was turning out not only a yearly 12-image calendar for Shaw-Barton, but numerous other pin-ups on playing cards, greeting cards, posters, matchbook covers, books, the entire panoply of pin-up merchandising. He took on Jerry Thompson as an assistant, and they worked together in California.
The hardy Mac Pherson somehow came down with polio and, for a time, Thompson approached the level of "ghost." When Mac fully recovered and got back into the pin-up swing, he sold Thompson's contract to another publisher, and from 1952 until at least 1958, T.N. Thompson's "Studio Sketches" was a top-selling rival calendar.
Thompson not only worked in Mac's sketchbook style (although eschewing pastels for oil), he used photo reference of Mintahoia D'Roney and other Mac Pherson models. His earlier calendars are quite good; later an overt cartoonist crept in as he moved away from Mac Pherson's influence.
More information at .... http://www.thepinupfiles.com/thompson.html

Alberto Vargas (1896–1982) was a noted painter of pin-up girls and erotica. Vargas was born in Arequipa, Peru, the son of a successful photographer, and was educated in Switzerland. Arriving in New York in 1916, he was determined to stay in America and pursue what became an illustrious career.

His name has become synonymous with pin-up girls, but in the early 1940s, he was just a guy hired by Esquire magazine to imitate departed star George Petty, who bolted over pay. Vargas initially aped Petty's sleek women with their telephone posing and large-hat lounging; soon, however, his own distinctive, delicate watercolor style emerged. His wide-eyed wonder-women rivaled Betty Grable as the ultimate pin-up girl of World War II. Vargas (who signed his Esquire work "Varga") had already achieved some notoriety for his Ziegfeld Follies and movie poster art. But Esquire made him famous, though he was paid poorly and, like Petty, eventually quit. Legal problems over ownership of his work even his own signature plagued him.

But late in his life, Vargas was given a second shot at fame and fortune by longtime fan Hugh Hefner. He is perhaps most famous for his 16 years illustrating for Playboy magazine, during the 1960s and 70s. His pictures would often portray, elegantly dressed, semi-nude to nude women of perfect proportions; large breasts, curved waists, etc. Vargas's artistic trait would be slender fingers and toes, often nails being painted red.

One of the true giants of American illustration, Alberto Vargas has created an art style so sensuous, so exquisite, that for the past six decades his magnificent paintings of women have come to embody the fantasies of three generations of women and men around the world. His work also appeared in Harper's Bazaar, Theatre Magazine, and Tattler. He died in December 1982.

Fritz Willis (1907 - 1979) was born on December 30, 1907 in Oklahoma City to Hal and Chloe Willis of Irish and English decent.
Willis, the final successor to Earl Mac Pherson in the Brown & Bigelow "Sketchbook" series, is perhaps the last major pin-up artist and the only one truly reflecting the sexual revolution. Primarily known for depicting brazenly sensual '60s women in semi-nude disarray, Willis has only a superficial similarity to Elvgren, the innocent girls next door of the latter having little to do with the wanton women of the former.
Oklahoma-born Willis had a distinguished career in magazine illustration. His clients included Collier's, Redbook, and The Saturday Evening Post, and his association with Esquire made him one of that magazine's earliest entries in its ultimately vain attempt to create a new Petty or Varga.